The Shapeshifter Wiki:General Policy
Preword *There are very few policies which apply across all Wikia. These can be found on the Central Wikia at Wikia:Category:Policy. An Overview *The Shapeshifter Wiki have a set of guidelines. Please read them before you start making many edits, they will help you a lot! This may give you some guidelines on how you edit! *We want to make a free, only encyclopedia of all things in the Dax Jones universe! Please respect this, don't add anything that has nothing to do with the Shapeshifter series. *All policies apply to all editors, no matter what role you have! The Shapeshifter Wiki wants to create a welcoming and amazing environment for all who are civil and assume good faith in everyone, seek consensus in discussions and work towards our goal of making an encyclopedia about everything in the Shapeshifter universe. *These rules are only to be broken if it good for the whole wiki! *The number one, most important commandment of this wiki is: :Ali Sparkes' word is law. *Also remember that this wiki is for under 13s! Content First of all, the wiki is what it says it is, an online encyclopedia about the Shapeshifter and Unleashed series. We hold information, facts, images and theories about the Shapeshifter as well as discussions on the books. Don't host fan things on the wiki, see the links to other websites page for webpages where you can share these things. They include, any kind of fanfiction, adverts, spam or articles not related to Ali Sparkes/The Shapeshifter. However, your profile/message wall is your own! As long as what you put there is legal then you can put it! Just remember that this is not a social networking site! All content displayed here (text, images, music etc.) must be in the public domain unless you have permission to use them publicly. All copyrighted files will be removed, not matter how good they are. Facts, quotes and figures can be taken from anywhere as long as they're sourced. All text must be original - do '''not' copy from Wikipedia or other websites'' Any users or editors who repeatedly refuse to follow these rules '''will' be banned at the discretion of any administrator, and their contributions deleted.'' Editing *''Do not'' edit articles with external WYSIWYG HTML editors (especially not Microsoft Word, which is notoriously unsuitable as an HTML editor because it inserts all manner of pointless fluff in the markup, vastly inflating the page size, typically to 5x or more what the page needs to be) unless you are willing to yourself run the article through a plain-text editor, and strip out all the fluff, before you post it. You might get lucky and have another editor do this for you (assuming they have the time and patience), but in the normal course of events, it is vastly more likely that your edit will just get reverted. *Avoid using Wikia's visual editor, as it's quite glitchy and can even make your edits look like vandalism. Use the source editor if you can and see if you're stuck. Links All links must where possible be in short form: Vandalism If you see an act of vandalism, please revert the page to its original state and report on an admin's message wall! NightSpeakers (talk) 20:01, August 21, 2018 (UTC)NightSpeakers. Any users committing acts of vandalism will be blocked for a period of 24-72 hours. Repeat offenders will receive punishment for high treason and be blocked indefinitely (with the exception of anonymous IP addresses). Administrators may also choose to use their best discretion and block for a longer or shorter period of time. Difficult to block or otherwise exceptional vandals will be reported to a staff. No Copy Policy All articles must be written so that they have complete and comprehensive information, at the same time being distinct from their Wikipedian counterparts. Some users and/or anons cut and paste Wikiarticles, leaving a whole tangled mess of redlinks and loops in Shapeshifter articles. If you see an article which seems to be a copy of a Wikipedian article, you can either be bold and rewrite the article yourself, or you can let us know! Writing style "In-universe" point of view For the sake of consistency, all articles written about people, places, or things within the Shapeshifter universe have to be written from an "in-universe" perspective rather than from a "real world" perspective: for example, "Dax Jones was '''the main character in the Shapeshifter series'"'' should be changed to "Dax Jones '''a young boy from England'". This rule naturally does not apply for subjects ''outside the Shapeshifter universe, like Ali Sparkes, publishers, and the books. Subjects that exist both in the real world and in the Shapeshifter universe should be written about from an in-universe perspective Tense Articles should be written in the past tense, as if the editor is writing from a point in the future after the events in the series have taken place. This is to maintain a consistent and uniform feel to the articles, and to eliminate ambiguity caused by switching tenses in the middle of an article. Spelling Since the Shapeshifter series is originally a British series, the British editions are the final source on spelling and phrases. Small examples are such things as the usage of alternate spellings like "colour" instead of "color", or "grey" instead of "gray." We should strive to remain consistent with the British versions wherever applicable. Where there exist multiple spellings, redirects should be made to the page with the British variant. Naming of articles Article naming of a character or person will, wherever possible, abide by the following conditions: * An article's title should contain the full first and last names *An article's title should contain the last name used most commonly throughout the Shapeshifter series, regardless of marriage. *Titles are not to be used in an article's title. **Titles include: Mr., Mrs., Lord (and derivatives) **The exception for this is a character who is only known by a single name, first or last, aside from their title. **Article naming of other subjects will, wherever possible, abide by the following conditions: *The use of an article (a, an, the) in an article's title is only acceptable when it is a part of the name. WikiText Style * Headers should be in the form Header , not the form Header . This only applies to articles, image pages use Summary automatically and talk pages are free form and no changes should ever be made to header style. Other * Do not go adding last names to links unless you have a valid reason to do so (e.g. if full character name hasn't been used earlier in the article). Full names should not be abused to bypass redirects. Stubs If you don't know enough information on a topic, an article is way too small, or you know there's more, then mark it as a stub. To do so, just add this to the top of the content with two {'s followed by the word'stub' and two }'s. And people will know that it's a stub by looking at the stub category. You can also mark an incomplete section of an otherwise-complete article by using similar markup at the end of the section, two {'s the word 'stub' and '|section' followed by two }'s. Page moves and rewrites As with any Wiki article, please do not make drastic changes and rewrites without the consent of other editors. Exceptions can be made if the article is in obviously bad shape. Otherwise, use the comments on the article to discuss changes to articles. General editing ;Reference edits Do not make edits involving adding information without also adding references using the reference tags (e.g. ). Edits that have not been referenced can and will be reverted without fail, no matter how hard you have worked on the information you gathered. ;Use the edit summary When editing pages, try to fill in the "Summary" box above the Save/Preview buttons before saving, and make sure that you fill it in with something useful describing the edit you made and, if it's not obvious, why. For example, "fixed spelling error" or "added fun fact" or "reverted edits by 127.0.0.1" are all acceptable. Saying "made some changes" or just filling in the name of the page is not helpful, because it's information that we already have. Making your Summaries accurate and useful makes it vastly easier for the rest of us to keep track of Recent Changes and keeps everybody happy. ;Use the minor edit button If you're making a minor edit (e.g. fixing a spelling error or tweaking formatting), try to remember to check the "This is a minor edit" button below the Summary box before saving the page. Again, this will make things easier for the rest of us. ;Don't use conversational style This is an online cyclopedia. It should read like an encyclopedia, not like your diary. * Check your spelling and grammar. Don't use internet slang (ex. "How r u?" or "c u 2nite"). If you're not 100% sure about the way a word is spelled, type it into Google or Dictionary.com. If you know that you're not the strongest speller, compose your edits in a word processor or web browser which has spell-checking (Firefox 2 and derivatives such as Lolifox, and Opera when ASpell is installed all work). * Don't use "smileys" or "emoticons" in articles. * Don't "reply" to content others have posted. If you think a particular point warrants discussion, post on the article's comments. If you're 100% sure that something should be changed and don't think a discussion is necessary, just change it. Dialogue goes only on articles' comments. ;Don't sign your edits All contributions are appreciated, but if every user left their mark on every contribution they made, the wiki would be nothing but signatures. If you've made an edit that you're particularly proud of, the correct place to take credit is on your own user page. If you do not have a user account, we respect your anonymity, but your edits will remain anonymous, too. ;Sign forum posts If you make a post on a discussion page or in the forum, please sign it. This is as easy as typing ~~~~ at the end of your post. If you don't have a user account, you could also sign it with your name or nickname so everybody can tell who's who when reading long conversations. Even better, create an account anyway and use the signature method described. There really is no reason not to if you're going to stick around. And getting an account gives you benefits such as being able to upload images to contribute, move pages that need moving, and the community will let you make use of your own userspace. (Anon users generally don't get that because their userspace may be shared among a number of people) ;Use templates Templates are provided for a reason (actually, several reasons); they ensure pages are consistent in appearance, properly categorised etc. For instance, don't make the mistake of attempting to mark pages for deletion by adding ordinary text saying "this page needs to be deleted"; the page won't be added to the "Candidates for deletion" category, and thus nobody but you will know that it needs to be deleted unless they happen upon it. Use the delete template (see below) instead. ;Date pages to be deleted Don't just add to a page which you think needs to be deleted; instead, add (note that that's five tildes, not four) to automatically sign the time at which the template was added. Do use the actual template, not a plain-text "equivalent." Category:Policies